From Builders to Pickers:
How to Adapt to the
Changing Role of IT
1 Introduction: The New Demands on IT:
The Intersection of Work and Personal Life
Workers tap into their network of friends on LinkedIn
or Facebook for business advice. Someone might upload a
marketing video onto YouTube, using a non-company-issued
smart phone, while waiting for a dentist appointment. The modern
worker blends personal and work lives in all sorts of ways;
and it’s now the job of the IT department to keep up with this
“consumerization” movement.
One of the most-used phrases in technology circles today is
“the consumerization of IT.” This fast-growing trend is built on
the simple concept that people expect their work tools to have
the same ease-of-use and effectiveness as the smart phones,
social sites, and other technology they make use of in their
personal lives.
These expectations―demands, really―are changing the role
of IT departments from organizations that build proprietary
technology tools to organizations that choose which existing
tools will best meet workers’ needs, and then adapt those tools
for business needs. These demands are causing IT departments
to figure out new ways to let in-office and remote workers
connect, collaborate, and communicate in familiar ways.
From Builders to Pickers: How to Adapt to the Changing Role of IT | Citrix © 2012
These expectations―
demands, really―are changing
the role of IT departments
from organizations that build
proprietary technology tools
to organizations that choose
which existing tools will best
meet workers’ needs, and then
adapt those tools for business
needs. These demands are
causing IT departments to
figure out new ways to let
in-office and remote workers
connect, collaborate, and
communicate in familiar ways.
2
2 Consumerization Puts Business First
Ironically, the consumerization of IT is really about business―it’s
the fundamental understanding that the way people want to work
has changed, and so technology has to change to accommodate
them. Work has shifted from being a place where people go, to a
thing they do.
As a result, companies and employees are rethinking when it’s most convenient and
efficient for them to work. For example, a parent might take the afternoon off to see
her son’s baseball game, but she can catch any crucial business communications on
her mobile device. She can then continue her work at home, via remote access to her
work desktop, that night.
As work and personal lives blend, so are the communication
tools used in both areas. According to a Citrix survey of
1,100 senior executives and IT managers across Australia,
France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the U.S.,
conducted between May and August of 2011, some 25
percent of enterprises and small to medium-sized businesses
worldwide allow employees to use their personal devices
for work purposes. More than one-third of these companies
acknowledge the increased pressure to adopt more flexible
workplace practices. Employees want to work on their terms,
integrating their personal lives with their work lives, including
their technology.
There is a distinct payoff
from using this approach.
Companies that support
employees using their
personal devices―called
Bring Your Own Device
(BYOD)―saw a 25 to 35
percent boost in productivity.
The BYOD development
can also reduce companies’
capital expenditures.
There is a distinct payoff from using this approach. Companies that support
employees using their personal devices―called Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)―
saw a 25 to 35 percent boost in productivity. The BYOD development can also
reduce companies’ capital expenditures.
The consumerization of IT―and the BYOD movement―is having far-reaching
implications. This is especially true as more and more workers become mobile and
need to access data and applications as easily in the field as they do from an office PC.
From Builders to Pickers: How to Adapt to the Changing Role of IT | Citrix © 2012
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Mimicking the way workers work
Consider Apache Corporation, an independent energy company which sends
approximately 130 scientists―geologists, petrophysicists, geophysicists, and
geochemists―to exploration and drilling sites around the globe. These locations,
which include offshore drilling rigs, are often remote and have weak or unreliable
network connectivity.
“Our scientists work with graphics-intensive applications, including 2D and 3D
seismic and mapping systems, which account for tens of gigabytes of data,” says
Bradley Lauritsen, senior manager of geoscience computing for Apache. “For several
years, they struggled with our existing remote access system, which relied on access
to our corporate databases via a virtual private network.”
Consequently, in the past, scientists frequently had to drive to the nearest town to
access files and data, or even fly back to the office periodically. That led to costly
delays, since rigs sat idle waiting for the scientists to make a decision on whether
they should continue to dig.
Apache experimented with remote access solutions but encountered an issue that
strikes at the heart of the consumerization of IT: the scientists didn’t like that the
interface was different than what they were accustomed to on their PCs. It was only
when Apache found a system that mimicked the way the scientists already worked―
including the ability to handle multiple monitors―that they embraced it.
The new system allows the scientists to scroll from one monitor to another―even
on a small laptop or handheld device. “Our scientists are very happy because they
simply log in to the service, and they can view and work with all their applications,
data, and other resources, just as if they were in the office,” Lauritsen says.
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3 Follow the Cloud
A key reason for the consumerization of IT is the advent of cloud
computing. This is an outsourced arrangement where a company
moves some or all of its network, system platforms, apps, and
storage to a remote site where they are managed by a third party.
Cloud computing provides plenty of benefits―companies can immediately access
technology on an as-needed basis, paying only for what they want. In June 2011,
International Data Corporation estimated that, during the next five years, spending
on public IT cloud services are expected to increase from $21.5 billion in 2010 to
$72.9 billion in 2015.
One thing cloud computing has done is it has given employees immediate access
to computing technology by simply pulling out a credit card―in a similar way to
how they use technology at home. “The big challenge is that IT has been resistant
to the whole trend and has tried to restrict employees in various ways from the
products they could use,” says Patrick Gray, president of the Prevoyance Group,
an IT consulting organization. “IT has a command and control approach―they were
the only game in town. But now an employee goes home, can get cloud storage,
and in five minutes files are flying between the office and smart phone.”
Companies, especially small ones, are realizing that moving to a cloud-computing
environment actually gives them more control. “The smaller companies are more
nimble, and they see that consumerization and cloud technology allows them to get
high-end technology for a low cost,” he says.
IT departments have found that cloud technology is a key factor in changing how
they need to view technology. “Technology used to be developed for business, and
then some of it was adapted for consumers,” says Arun Sundararajan, a professor
at the Stern School of Business, New York University. “That all has changed. Now
companies are seeing things like mobile phones and social media, and saying, ‘how
do we use this consumer technology in the business?’”
From Builders to Pickers: How to Adapt to the Changing Role of IT | Citrix © 2012
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The rise of social business
One good example of consumerization is social networks. People have become
accustomed to using Facebook and other social networks in their personal
lives, to share photos, exchange information, and stay in touch with friends and
acquaintances around the world. IT departments realize that mobile workers need
the same capabilities.
The change is that these social platforms are being adapted
for work needs. Small and medium-size businesses can turn
to cloud-based social platforms that allow them to create
workspaces where employees, clients, and contractors can
collaborate on a given project.
In the latest incarnations of social platforms, even workers who
do not possess programming skills can create a task-specific
app related to the project at hand. For example, an accounting
team could create an app that automates their workflow.
In the latest incarnations
of social platforms, workers
who do not possess
programming skills can create
a task-specific app related
to the project at hand. For
example, an accounting team
could create an app that
automates their workflow.
This also fundamentally changes the role of IT. “That shifts them from being builders
of technology to adapters of technology,” Sundararajan says. “They are not creating
something; they are adapting something that is already out there.”
From Builders to Pickers: How to Adapt to the Changing Role of IT | Citrix © 2012
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4 Think Like a Consumer
The consumerization of IT has many implications. For one thing,
IT departments must expand the scope of their intelligence
gathering in terms of consumer technology. “They don’t need to
keep an eye on what competitors are doing and what a major
vendor has on the shelf,” Sundararajan says. “They need to
look in the consumer marketplace and understand why a new
technology is popular among consumers.”
By understanding employees’ needs more deeply, the IT department can get out
ahead of employees and choose tools that allow them to collaborate and access
information as easily as they do at home. Sundararajan says leading IT departments
are having weekly discussions on what cool, new consumer technology people in the
IT department have come across.
“You probably have a whole bunch of internal knowledge that
hasn’t been fully integrated into the business systems, such as
thinking about how to use an iPhone interface for your business
systems or workflow systems,” he says. “For IT departments,
this is simply getting used to leveraging what people already
know and pushing them to take it a step further.”
By understanding employees’
needs more deeply, the IT
department can get out ahead
of employees and choose tools
that allow them to collaborate
and access information as
easily as they do at home.
Shifting the perception of IT
Gray says smart IT departments are sending out short email newsletters, providing
updates on the newest technology and social media services that people may use at
home. “That shifts IT from being the ‘department of no’ to experts in new technology,”
he says. “As a result, employees who are thinking about adopting new technology
are more likely to go to them for their input.”
As IT departments embrace this inevitable transition, they need to become
influencers and strategists and promoters of consumerization. Instead of maintaining
on-premise solutions, for example, they can flexibly adapt cloud-hosted solutions as
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business needs evolve. Relying on IT services from the cloud,
for instance, allows the support team to connect machines
remotely, share screens, and control the computer so that they
provide the hands-on, personalized support users want.
“An integrated cloud-based remote support and IT-management
platform is very compelling, based on the specific needs
of SMBs and a more distributed workforce,” says Robert
Mahowald, head of the SaaS and Cloud Services Practice at
the consulting firm IDC. “There’s a new reality for a cloud-based
service for managing devices and user desktops, and this
simple and easy approach that enables companies to provide
remote support and monitoring in one offering looks like a winner.”
As IT departments embrace
this inevitable transition, they
need to become influencers
and strategists and promoters
of consumerization. Instead
of maintaining on-premise
solutions, for example,
they can flexibly adapt cloudhosted solutions as business
needs evolve.
Benefits of remote resolution
This has been the approach taken by SPRT IT Solutions, an IT consulting firm.
SPRT provides complete management of a client’s IT environment, including
planning, help desk, software and hardware administration, and network monitoring,
via a monthly contract.
“To optimize the efficiency and productivity of our team, we avoid driving to a client’s
location whenever possible,” says Bryan Brooks, the consultancy’s IT manager.
“We rely on remote monitoring to anticipate problems before they escalate and on
remote support to resolve issues. Unattended support is particularly important so that
clients aren’t disturbed by administrative tasks.”
Brooks’ team can take control of their entire network and provide cloud-based remote
support and IT infrastructure monitoring with a single tool, allowing them to support
people and machines remotely. “We rely on monitoring capabilities to anticipate
application, device, and server issues that could cause a problem for a client, such
as a server approaching overload,” he says. “Monitoring helps ensure a smoothly
operating client network and allows us to optimize our time and efforts. Ironically,
some clients wonder why they don’t hear from us very often, and that’s because
we are successful in avoiding IT problems that could interrupt their business.”
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This approach is also benefitting O’Neill Clothing, an innovator in creating action
sportswear. (It made the first-ever neoprene wetsuit and surf leash, the world’s first
stitch-less board shorts, and a range of groundbreaking wearable electronics.) The
company uses 140 factories all around the world to produce its clothes and shoes.
This complex supply chain raises all sorts of challenges for IT, such as providing
support for those far-flung users. In managing remote systems by telephone, the
IT help desk often had to deal with non-English-speaking employees while using
a locally installed remote support application over Internet connections of varying
quality. The IT department switched to a hosted solution that required no premisebased hardware or software to be installed at the remote production sites.
Peter Maljaars, the global IT services and infrastructure manager for O’Neill, says
this change allows his team to undertake remote diagnostic and repair work without
having to involve the individual operator. “Users can hand over their machine to us,
and we can take the necessary corrective action while they go off and undertake
other impor¬tant tasks, making more effective use of time,” he says.
From Builders to Pickers: How to Adapt to the Changing Role of IT | Citrix © 2012
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5 Walking the Talk
For IT departments to maintain their position as technology
leaders, it’s not enough to give lip service to the consumerization
of IT. IT needs to educate employees about how these new
work tools truly mesh with their expectations. At the same
time, IT needs to embrace the same technology in their own
processes, such as using mobile devices to remotely support
workers from anywhere.
Cornerstone Technologies, an IT consulting firm in Silicon
Valley, builds morale among geographically dispersed
employees, raises productivity, and increases profitability with
HD video conferencing that can be used on mobile devices.
“It’s changing the way we work with one another,” says Eugene
Alfaro, the company’s director of IT professional services.
“We’re growing as an IT consulting firm, and we’re considering
no longer having an office.
He points out that for one project’s kick-off meeting, an engineer
who was traveling was able to take part on his iPad while riding
in the back of a car. He could see the objectives, deliverables,
and the timeline that had been agreed to with the client.
“Work is no longer where I
need to be or the four walls
of an office, but wherever I
am at that moment,” Alfaro
says. “Satisfaction with that
work-life balance is critically
important. Allowing employees
to shift their work, pause, do
the things they need to do in
their personal lives, and then
go back to work, gives them
the flexibility they crave, and it
raises their morale.”
Work is where the workers are
“Work is no longer where I need to be or the four walls of an office, but wherever
I am at that moment,” Alfaro says. “Satisfaction with that work-life balance is critically
important. Allowing employees to shift their work, pause, do the things they need to
do in their personal lives, and then go back to work, gives them the flexibility they
crave, and it raises their morale.”
Advanced Discovery, a provider of investigatory and litigation services for
corporations, governmental agencies, and law firms worldwide, uses technology
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tools to help clients respond to discovery, investigatory, or regulatory requests by
quickly and accurately reducing vast amounts of electronically stored information to
searchable data sets.
The company has a sprawling infrastructure―80 servers and 250 desktops and
laptops spread across 12 offices and multiple datacenters. James Branch, the
company’s chief IT officer, uses a system that allows unattended remote support
for overseeing servers and other datacenter assets, while attended remote support
assists Advanced Discovery employees and clients who are accessing applications
hosted in the company’s datacenters.
Importantly for Branch, the system has capabilities on the Mac
and iPad platforms, as well as on Windows-based PCs; he uses
all three. “I access [the system] from my iPad at least once
a week, particularly when I’m traveling,” he says. “That means
I don’t have to carry a laptop.”
A key benefit of the change
is allowing the IT department
to be proactive rather than
reactive.
This approach enables Branch and his personnel, who are located in Texas, Kansas,
California, and India, to efficiently and proactively manage the company’s production
and hosting datacenters, which store hundreds of terabytes of data on behalf of
clients and host a number of mission-critical applications. “In the past, we’d get
notified only when a server was nearly out of space, and then we’d have to scramble
to add more capacity,” he says. “It had a negative impact on our ability to take on new
clients and store their information.
From reactive to proactive
A key benefit of the change is allowing the IT department to be proactive rather
than reactive. “I can set thresholds at specific percentages―50 percent or 75
percent―and receive alerts when the servers hit those thresholds,” Branch says.
“That advance notification gives us the lead time we need to perform replacements
or upgrades. Without [this], I would have to assign someone to check each server
on a regular basis, which would require adding more staff.”
Proactive is an apt description. Because getting ahead of the technology, and driving
business results, is what the consumerization of IT is all about.
From Builders to Pickers: How to Adapt to the Changing Role of IT | Citrix © 2012
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Serving Consumerization
If you’re seeking the tools you need to create an environment in which your
team can use the tools it already has—or wants—to effectively improve
collaboration and communication, Citrix Collaboration and IT Support offers
a range of web-based services designed to bring it all together:
•
GoToAssist allows you to choose Remote Support,
Monitoring, or both to provide support for people and machines.
•
GoToMeeting with HD video conferencing makes it simple and
cost-effective to collaborate online with colleagues and customers.
Meeting participants can share their webcams in high definition,
so you can enjoy more personal interactions, without a complicated
setup. To learn more, visit www.GoToMeeting.com.
•
GoToMyPC gives you and your staff the ability to access and work
on your office Mac or PC from any web browser—including an iPad,
iPhone, or Android tablet—enabling productivity from any location.
Connect to work from home, the train, a hotel room, a café,
or wherever else you and your people need to be.
•
Podio helps you get work done with your co-workers and clients on
a social work platform that you make your own. Work with any group
of people inside a workspace and your entire company in your own
employee network.
•
ShareFile lets you securely share, sync, and store large files.
You can send and receive files up to 10GB; all file transfer and
storage is encrypted; and ShareFile offers easy-to-use account
and mobile features.
Visit us at www.citrixonline.com to learn more about all the
products and services Citrix offers to make your company—
and its communications—more efficient.
From Builders to Pickers: How to Adapt to the Changing Role of IT | Citrix © 2012
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About Inc. Magazine
Founded in 1979 and acquired in 2005 by Mansueto Ventures LLC, Inc. is the
only major business magazine dedicated exclusively to owners and managers of
growing private companies that delivers real solutions for today’s innovative company
builders. With a total paid circulation of 710,106, Inc. provides hands-on tools
and market-tested strategies for managing people, finances, sales, marketing,
and technology. Visit us online at www.inc.com.
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